ST FOILLAN, MARTYR - 31 OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 31st of October

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST FOILLAN, MARTYR

Saint Ultan, Saint Fursey, and Saint Foillan were three brothers, sons of Fyltan, king of Munster in Ireland.

Fursey embraced a monastic life in the islands, and, after some years, returning home, persuaded Ultan, who was the eldest brother, and Foillan also, to renounce the world.

St Fursey having travelled into England, and built the monastery of Knobersburg in the kingdom of the East-Angles, invited Foillan thither from Ireland, and left him abbot of that house.

After the death of St Fursey, which happened at Peronne about the year 650, SS. Ultan and Foillan went into France. They went both together from Cambray to Nivelle in Brabant, where St Gertrude governed a great nunnery, which her parents, Bl. Pepin of Landen, and Bl. Ita, had founded, with a neighbouring monastery of men.

They both stayed here some time, till St Gertrude, after the death of her mother, in 652, gave to St Ultan a territory to build an hospital and monastery, which is called Fosse, situate between the Meuse and the Sambre, in the diocess of Maestricht, now of Liege.

St Gertrude detained St Foillan at Nivelle, where he instructed the nuns, and preached to the people in the country.

He was going to pay a visit to his brother St Ultan at Fosse in 655, when he and three companions were assassinated by robbers, or infidels, in the forest of Sonec, now Charbonniere, in Hainault, on October 31.

His relics are kept with veneration in the church of Fosse, formerly served by monks, now by secular canons. St Ultan governed the monasteries of Fosse and Mont-Saint-Quentin many years, and died on May 1, towards the year 686.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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